Make A Connection with Custom Content

It’s time to treat our consumers like people, not like Sims characters. It’s important we think about a customer’s daily journey and essential needs and what we can do to make them feel special, and heard. When companies use terms like users and avatars to describe their target audiences, such generalizations devalue the importance of fulfilling an individual’s needs and relies on nothing more than basic demographics to build out and back up that profile.

How do you treat your customers like individuals who will feel respected and valued? Create customized content and use it to increase trust and build a deeper connection.

Tap Into Your Audience Mindset

You’ve done the research. But let’s dig a little deeper. Do you know what they like to do on the weekends? What motivates them to go to work every morning? Do they take their beloved husky-mix on a walk during their lunch break? These are trickier questions to answer. Beyond just demographics, psychographic, behavioral knowledge can help you go even further in connecting prospects and customers with your brand.

Be Where Your Audience Is

You can’t expect your customers to come to you – you must meet them wherever they are. Do you know how your audience gets to work every morning? Someone who drives an hour commute to work every morning is going to ingest content a lot differently than someone taking the train into town. Try an informational or narrative podcast, it’d be perfect for the person who’s stuck in traffic. A train commuter might read a blog post or watch a video during their commute. Think about accessibility and make sure you subtitle your videos in case someone forgets their headphones.

Show your Brand’s Personality

You now know what your audience cares about, what motivates them, and how they choose to ingest content. Now let them meet the real people behind the brand.

It’s all about building trust. Author, leader, and business expert Bob Burg has said, “All things being equal, people do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust.” Providing authentic insight and value without the catchy sales talk is the key to building the trust needed to convert your audience.

So, how do we move forward? Create authentic, informative, and relatable content and deliver it in ways that speak directly to the individual, wherever they are. Remember they’re on mobile now more than ever. Think about how bombarded they are with messaging, every single day. Respect their time, understand their journey, and connect wisely.